Vayera (Haftarah)

In the haftarah of Vayera, we find ourselves on entirely different ground. The selection chosen (2 Kings 4:1-36, or 1-26) contains two or three short vignettes describing miracles performed by the prophet Elisha, heir to the mantle of the mysterious figure of Elijah the prophet.

In the first incident (vv. 1-7), a destitute woman, widow of one of the prophetic devotees, is overwhelmed by debt upon her husband’s death and is worried that the creditors will come to take her children as slaves, and turns to Elisha for help. She is asked to gather as many empty jars as she can from the neighbors and to pour a few drops of oil into each one. These are miraculous filled to the brim with choicest oil, which she sells, getting enough money to pay off all her debts, with enough left over on which to live.

The second, central incident in the chapter, is prefaced by an account of how Elisha used to lodge at a certain home when he passed through the town of Shunem; the woman of the house even set aside for him a small upstairs room, with a bed, table, lamp and chair (these are seen by Hazal as the paradigmatic furnishings of a human habitation: no matching coaches, end tables, chandeliers, or breakfronts). One day, in appreciation of the trouble she has taken on his behalf, he asks if he can do anything for her in return. She responds that she has no need for favors or connections to the high and mighty; “among my people I dwell” (v. 13)—I am a humble, ordinary person. But Gehazi, Elisha’s assistant, observes that she has no children, and her husband is already old, and Elisha promises that, come the same time next year, she will suckle a child. The woman expresses disbelief: “Do not tease your maidservant.” Sure enough, within the year she bears a child.

This incident is of course the link to our Torah portion. It is closely parallel to its opening section, in which three angels come to Abraham with the tidings of the expected birth of Isaac. There too, the husband is old—although in the Torah Sarah was also definitely past her child-bearing years, as the text makes explicit; here, too, the woman expresses disbelief; even the language used (ka’et haya, “when this season comes around”; lamo’ed or lamo’ed hazeh, “at this time”; compare Gen 18:10, 14 with v. 16 here) is repeated almost verbatim.

But the story does not end there. Some years later, when the child has grown, he is suddenly stricken with a high fever while working in the field; he is carried home, and by mid-day dies on his mother’s knees. She places him on his bed, closes the door behind him, and immediately rides off on her donkey to tell the “man of God” her bitter tale. (The Sephardic custom, surprisingly, ends the haftarah with the exchange of greetings at Mount Carmel, literally in mid-story—in itself a point deserving of inquiry). First he sends Gehazi before him to try to revive the lad with his miraculous staff, but to no avail; when Elisha arrives, he closes the door, prays to God, and stretches himself upon the lad’s body, until he gradually returns to life.

Contemporary rationalists of course see this story as an example of artificial respiration, claiming that the boy was not dead, but merely in a deep coma, which was mistaken by his mother for death, from which the “man of God” was able to revive him by purely natural means. Certainly a plausible explanation.

I must admit that for a long time I had difficulty with the more miraculous side of religion: many of the miracles described in the Bible tested my credulity, and my inclination was towards a rational, natural explanation. All the more so the claims of miraculous powers to bless and curse on the part of contemporary wonder-working Kabbalists (which have proliferated over the past decade or two)—who offer their powers to aid others at a handsome price. At least one multi-million dollar high-rise building in Beer-sheva testifies to the fact that miracles do indeed pay off. (But for the biblical verdict on those who try to convert miracles into pecuniary gain, see the incident of Naaman and Gehazi in the very next chapter, 2 Kgs 5:20-27)

However, in principle, total and categorical scepticism about such matters is antithetical to our belief. Indeed, Abraham explicitly chastises Sarah in our portion on just this point, “Is any thing beyond God?” (18:14). Maimonides presents an interesting argument on this in his Treatise on Resurrection. He asserts there that a religious person must, in principle, accept at least the possibility of God upsetting the normal laws of nature at His will, even to perform such outrageous and seemingly impossible acts the resurrection of those long dead. Ultimately, he says, the greatest miracle is the Creation; at that mysterious moment long ago, God had to have exercised His will to render something out of nothing, to bring an orderly, beautifully designed, dynamic universe out of nothingness, or even out of static, preexistent chaotic matter. True, once God created the cosmos He established the laws of physics and so on which govern it. Nevertheless, in principle interference with these ordinarily iron-clad laws remains an option for God, just as it was at Creation.

As for the belief in holy men or tzaddikim who can perform miracles in God’s name and using Divine powers: I see this as related, in principle, to the belief in prophecy. Just as God may communicate with men, so too may He convey upon them certain extraordinary powers. Maimonides sees prophecy as one of the fundaments of Jewish faith, upon which the entire Torah, as the prophecy of Moses, is ultimately based. Needless to say, one is permitted a large measure of scepticism regarding any specific claim to divinely bestowed powers. In particular, the moment a given individual’s moral behavior falls short of the highest standards, one may certainly discredit his claim to the title; and this, unfortunately, seems to be the case of virtually all the folk Kabbalists and holy men currently operating. But, in principle, there are things in our lives that do transcend the natural.

Afterthoughts on Elisha and the Shunemite Woman

After reading last week’s haftarah, it occurred to me that those stories in which barren women are remembered by God and bear children were particularly popular with those who selected the Haftarot. Three such stories appear in the prophetic books, and all three are read as haftarot: the story of Hannah and the birth of Samuel (1 Samuel 1), read on the first day of Rosh Hashana; the visitation of an angel to Manoah and his wife, culminating in the birth of the hero Samson (Judges 13), read on Shabbat Naso (through the association to the laws of the Nazirite); and the one involving Elisha and the anonymous woman from the obscure town of Shunem.

Stories of the miraculous births of kings and heroes, saviors and future religious leaders, are common to many, if not all, human cultures. Anthropologists have even studied tem and described certain typical patterns of these legends. What I find interesting is that the tale related in 2 Kings 4 specifically does not involve an important person: the Shunemite woman and the child born to her were utterly ordinary persons; we do not even know their names; after the miraculous events involving Elisha, they return to their obscurity, and we do not know whether he lived to rise a family, whether he enjoyed a ripe old age, or whether he died young. His entire significance, for the purposes of the biblical narrator, lay in his being an object of the miracles performed by Elisha. Was the whole purpose of narrating this incident to provide a backdrop for this miraculous account? To show that God visits the barren woman (in itself a popular and deeply appealing theme, emotionally: there are always barren women who hope that God will answer their prayers); and that there are men like Elisha, blessed with extraordinary powers, to whom God has granted use of the keys of visiting the barren, or even of quickening the dead.